What I want to know is WHY does the solar system have a helical precession? Why is it twisting around on its way around the galaxy rather than just orbiting in a nice elliptical fashion? it seems to me there would have to be some sort of other major gravitational influence to pull it further from the galactic center as it begins the "outbound" phase of its precession.
Is this just an issue of angular momentum? I can sort of picture each orbit being offset from the last, but it's all these little microcycles that make no sense to me.

Keplers laws of orbital motions says that objects orbit equal areas at equal times. So the only explanation in that there is a mass that extends theroretically forever making observations at this scale obsolete for that particular law.